Through their Innovation Grants Program, The Blackstone Charitable Foundation has also chosen LaunchTN’s 36|86 conference as one of their awardees for the fourth consecutive year. This award will fund the $50,000 grand prize that will be awarded to the winner of the 36|86 startup competition.

Additional sponsor commitments include Cherry Bekaert LLC and LBMC.

“We are excited to announce the addition of these high-caliber speakers and sponsors to our 36|86 roster,” says Charlie Brock, CEO of LaunchTN. “This year’s program lineup is shaping up to be the best yet and one you definitely will not want to miss.”

Jim McKelvey is best known for co-founding the mobile payments company, Square, where he currently serves as a Director. He also serves as a General Partner at Cultivation Capital and co-founder of LaunchCode, a nonprofit that helps talented coders get their first jobs at top companies.

Tyson Clark is a partner at Google Ventures, focusing on companies in the enterprise technology, SaaS application and data center infrastructure spaces. Prior to joining GV, Tyson was a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he worked in corporate development and with enterprise portfolio companies.

Pelli Wang is Venture Director at SeedInvest, a leading equity crowdfunding platform and early-stage VC fund. Prior to joining SeedInvest, she worked at Lean Startup Machine, which is a NYC enterprise SaaS startup that was part of the TechStars accelerator.

Paul Santinelli has been a Partner at North Bridge since 2005, focusing on investments in open source, software, security, Internet applications and infrastructure & communications. Previously, he served as director of Red Hat Network and was responsible for product definition, strategy, engineering, product management, marketing and lifecycle management for the company.

Vijay Balasubramaniyan is Co-Founder, CEO & CTO of Pindrop Security, an Atlanta-based startup backed by Google Ventures. Vijay has held various engineering and research roles with Google, Siemens, IBM Research, and Intel. Vijay was recently recognized by the MIT Technology Review’s annual Innovators Under 35 list as an outstanding inventor.

The 36|86 conference is renowned for featuring the best in southern culture, entrepreneurship and investment. Last year’s event drew over 900 attendees, including over 120 investors representing 86 venture firms and 34 presenting startups from the Southeast and Washington, D.C. This year’s 36|86 conference is scheduled for June 6 & 7, 2016 at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in downtown Nashville.

Tickets for 36|86 are available at www.3686South.com, with a limited number of early-bird tickets still available at discounted prices.